Irrigation controllers are used in irrigation systems to electrically operate valves that deliver water under pressure to sprinklers or other distribution devices for watering turf or plants. Controllers are normally installed and programmed after the irrigation system has been designed. Technical skills and experience relating to such installations vary greatly from first-time do-it-yourselfers to professional landscaping crews. Furthermore, once the watering schedules are set on initial installation, they need to be changed or adjusted from time to time to adapt the system to climate or seasonal changes, growth of plants, or unanticipated conditions of soil or topography that result in inadequate or excessive watering in some areas of the system.
During the design and installation of the irrigation system, the system is divided into zones, each of which irrigates an area of turf or plants having similar growth characteristics and consequently similar water needs. Thus, the amount and frequency of watering can be controlled uniformly and individually for any given grouping of vegetation in the system. The number and frequency of the periodic adjustments that need to be made to the system depends on the complexity of the landscaping and the changes in the variable water requirements.
Many of the controllers currently available on the market offer a wide array of features and options. These are typically accessed by dials, knobs, buttons and switches, while information is primarily displayed by alphanumeric displays and/or indicator lights. Thus, altering the watering schedule of a controller can be a bewildering, frustrating experience for users, such as homeowners, who seldom find it necessary to make schedule changes. The typical lack of intuitive controls, the often obscure instructions in manuals, and an installer's reluctance to spend time training the user exacerbate that problem.
Worse yet is the not uncommon situation where the 24V AC power fails when the back-up battery that retains data in memory during power failures has been allowed to wear out. In that case, all program information may be lost, and the user has to reprogram the whole system without the original installer's guidance.
As personal computers (PCs) have become more and more commonplace in homes, fairly complex irrigation control systems have been sold to homeowners and other users who are not very sophisticated in manually programming complex controllers, but who do own a PC. Such users are likely to be quite familiar with standard methods of interactively manipulating graphics. For example, most PC users intuitively know how to drag and drop icons by moving and clicking a mouse.
For such users, it is highly desirable to provide a user-friendly graphic interface which allows an operator to manipulate the settings of the field controller with a mouse, and visually observe the effect of his manipulations. In addition, it would be advantageous for users to have a means of allowing repair personnel in the field to perform diagnostic downloads and/or basic control functions, such as turning the water on and off at desired locations, without having to physically access the field controller or the PC. Also, it would be advantageous for users to see how different selections of watering settings would affect the cost of operating the irrigation system.